A day after party President Mallikarjun Kharge's controversial ‘poisonous snake’ remark against Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union home minister Amit Shah on Friday said that the opposition Congress party has “lost its mind”. “The whole world welcomes PM Modi, but the Congress president calls him a poisonous snake”, Shah said during a rally in poll-bound Karnataka.

Kharge was addressing a public gathering in Karnataka’s Kalaburagi on Thursday when he said, “PM Narendra Modi is like a poisonous snake. Now if you want to test a venom because I compared him with a poisonous snake, beware it will lead to your death.”

As he began receiving a massive backlash from the ruling party's leaders, Kharge later clarified that he did not mean to attack PM Modi personally. “My comments are not meant for PM Modi. I called the BJP ideology poisonous, and did not attack PM Modi personally. What I said was their ideology is like a snake and if you try to touch it, your death is certain," he said.

Meanwhile, a Karnataka BJP MLA hit back at the Congress party over the remark on Friday and called Sonia Gandhi a ‘vishkanya’ (a mythological female assassin).